Here's The Poop On Compost

Maintaining a compost bin is one of the best things you can do for your garden. The pile does not need to smell if managed properly.  The benefits far outweigh any perceived hassle of making compost.

So let's jump into compost with both feet and talk about the benefits, uses, getting started, and ongoing maintenence of your compost.

Benefits of Compost
Finished compost can feed your plants with needed nutrients without too much risk of burning up the plants if managed properly. You can avoid using chemicals to fertilize your vegetables if you have compost on hand.  You'll also be doing your part to reduce the burdon on your community's land fill. If 10% of your trash is composted, you won't make a noticable dent in the city service.  But consider the impact if enough members of your community did their part to compost.  Think of all the organic food that your entire community could be enjoying if more people implimented a small square foot garden.

Uses of Compost
If you are growing vegetables using the Square Foot Gardening method, you need to provide a steady source of good food and nutrition to your vegetables.  There are two ways that you will use compost in your Square Foot Garden:

• As you are preparing a 12" square for planting after harvesting, you'll turn the soil in that square with a hand trowel, break up any clumps, then smoothen out the top of the square.  Next, you'll add a trowel full of compost to the square and work it in to the top inch or two. Now that you've "amended" that square, it's ready to be planted with a new crop. Remember to choose a different crop than the one you just harvested from that square, which is called crop rotation, and designed to keep from depleting too much of the same nutrient from the soil. 

• Once your plants are well established, you will feed them once a week with a "compost tea" besides your normal watering schedule. Make the tea by placing a trowel full of compost in the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket. Fill the bucket with water and let the tea steep throughout the day.  In the evening, gently pour a measured cup of compost tea on each plant.  When you get to the bottom of the bucket, you can either put the compost sludge back into your compost bin or you can use it to top-dress a few of your heaviest feeding vegetables.  I stop feeding root vegetables with the compost tea about 2 weeks before their harvest.

Getting Started With Compost
If you started your garden with bags Mel's Mix, you already have a good compost built into that growing medium.  You will still want to start a compost bin so you can keep the vegetables fed on a regular basis.

For the city gardener, I suggest using plastic trash cans and a 5 gallon bucket for your compost system. One of the trash cans will have finished compost in it, one will be a "work in progress" and an optional third trash can will be used for turning your compost. The 5 gallon bucket is needed to make tea.

To give your compost system a quick jump start, purchase some finished compost.  I visit a few nurseries, purchase different types of compost, and blend.  Buy one bag of deoterized cow manure and a bag of worm castings. You may also want to add a bag of chicken manure.  Simply blend the purchased stuff in one of the trash cans and you're ready to go.

Ongoing Maintenence of Your Compost
In the second trash can, I begin keeping garden and kitchen scraps that are appropriate for making compost.  Any non-diseased vegetables and garden waste can go in your compost bin.  Keep used coffee grounds, banana peels, and hard-boiled egg shells.

Avoid adding any meat, fat, dressings and broths, uncooked egg, dairy, etc. to the compost.  Do not add your dog and cat manure, nor the grass cuttings from your yard if you have a dog.

Just about everything that I've mentioned so far that you can put in your compost bin is considered "green", even if it's dried out and has turned brown.  It all really is still green stuff that is simply dehydrated.

You will need to add about twice as much "brown" as green to your working compost bin.  Brown products include shredded paper towels and paper plates (again being careful not to include any animal products), cardboard, chip board, etc.  Think of it this way, if the compost bin smells nasty, add sufficient shredded cardboard to absorb the odor.  In a day or two, the pile will smell sweet rather than sour.  That's how you know if you've added enough brown to the pile.

It can be difficult to reach into a trash can and turn the compost, which needs to happen on a regular basis.  So I find that having an empty trash can available helps.  As long as I keep my working compost bin small enough to be able to pick up, I can dump it's contents into the empty trash can and the compost turning is complete.

You also want to keep the compost moist but not flooded.  It helps to drill small drainage holes around trash cans that you've dedicated to composting.  The holes also will help with needed air circulation. A good working compost bin is "aerobic" rather than anaerobic. Oxygen is required for the process to work.

Summary
So there's the poop on compost.  As a minimum, you need to have purchased compost on hand so that you can feed your vegetables organically on a regular basis.  I hope that you decide to create your own compost too.